


Ephemerality

by alphaenterprise



Category: Pacific Rim (2013)
Genre: Gen, Introspection, Post-Knifehead, tumblr inspired
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2014-07-08
Updated: 2014-07-08
Packaged: 2018-02-08 01:20:39
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings, No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,020
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/1921308
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/alphaenterprise/pseuds/alphaenterprise
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Yancy Becket's death is a swansong, violent and terrible in all facets, for he is dragged from the world with all the intensity of a star's explosion. He ascends, shouting for his brother, into an endless, indefinite darkness permeated only by frigid oceanwater and otherworldly, eerie bioluminescence of monsters</p>
            </blockquote>





	Ephemerality

**Author's Note:**

> cross posted from my tumblr and inspired by a post with this in the description: '#imagine your brothers death being burned into your side for the rest of your life #yeah id wear sweaters all the time too'

 

Yancy Becket's death is a swansong, violent and terrible in all facets, for he is dragged from the world with all the intensity of a star's explosion. He ascends, shouting for his brother, into an endless, indefinite darkness permeated only by frigid oceanwater and otherworldly, eerie bioluminescence of monsters. Raleigh is left an only child, made in mere seconds, and empties the clip of plasma blasts into Knifehead's body while his skin is seared with the impression of his torn circuitry suit and his brain is subjected to high enough levels of radiation that his nose begins to bleed like a dam breaking. He feels white-hot pain from the fractures of the drift that once held so strong between them, forged and strengthened with the solidarity of being the last of their family to live, and it is only with sheer force of will and all-encompassing rage that he drags Gipsy Danger's battered frame to the shoreline. He claws from the conn pod, blood in his eyes and weighing down his lungs, and is forced to stomach that his brother has been swallowed by the black undertow of the ocean.

 

Yancy Becket's death is a battle-song etched in twisted, poorly healed scars on Raleigh's ribs. It is a litany of bravery that bloomed at an early age, settled when their mother died and tempered by the responsibility of caring for a younger brother and sister without a father's aid, and Raleigh's adolescent nightmares slid from being contaminated with Kaiju blue to the sound of heart monitors flatlining and smelling of sterile hospital rooms. Yancy had soothed them, stood taller than mountains and aged too early, and had never spoken about the dark circles that grew and healed beneath his eyes over the years. There is the taste of their mother's secondhand smoke in the drift, acrid and poisonous, that used to float from Yancy's side, and on days where Raleigh drags like he is fresh out of the med ward, everything tastes like ash. he cannot write, isn't eloquent in the moments when he feels he should be, but every time he changes clothes, his brother's eulogy flutters to life in the ropes of scarring that tear into his skin. He defends Yancy when greenhorn reporters want to dig their sharp talons into the events of Anchorage, makes himself stand taller and project ferocious defense that is uncharacteristic, because he'll be damned before he lets anyone take his brother's name and drag it through hypocritical, blatant lies.

 

Yancy is immortalized like the oldest of tales, written on flesh in a matter so permanent that the only removal is death. He is carved into immutable life, abstract in the pointed, abrupt curves of mottled skin, and if Raleigh feels especially low, he finds it in himself to pull strength from the vast depth of the ghost drift for his brother. The world would forget; politicians, refugees, newscasters thrown the dead pilot into shadow, hidden beneath unforgiving Alaskan waters, except when they rehash Raleigh's life afterwards and he hears the undercurrent of the idea that their roles should be reversed as if it were spoken with shaken heads and disappointed scowls.

 

Raleigh's scars become an epitaph, the gravest of monuments and starkest of reminders, and there is no body to bury when the funeral is held. He is given two folded flags, one with the Defense Corps' insignia followed by an American flag that is much heavier than the coffin being lowered into the ground that is without a body. More forcibly, he is left with broken ribs and mangled skin; etched into Raleigh's torso is the feeling of a life being extinguished, the sensation of the entirety of the world being torn asunder, and, more potently, the echoing death rattle of 'Raleigh listen to me'.

 

So he covers the puckered, reddened flesh with sweaters, knitted by his (dead) mother's deft hands for his (dead) brother who was always lazy and languid and cold all the time, quiets the 'listen, _listen_ , **_listen_** to me', and tamps down the feelings of his skin burning so viciously when he pulls or twists the wrong way. The bite of cold and exertion atop the wall of life in Sitka combats the pain of feeling his brother's death, and the methodical process of building, building, building drags a monochrome monotony into Raleigh's life. He stands tall above the others, climbs the beams of metal without fear, and breathes the thinness of the air while reveling in the sting in his lungs. Raleigh hides his wounds with bitter words towards those who look down their nose at Yancy, protects his memory from being desecrated with boundless energy, and hammers and welds metal to build his broken throne atop his battered life as if to use it as the last defense of his brother's peace.

 

When Stacker Pentecost barks at him, all military precision and square shoulders, "Where would you rather die? Here? Or in a Jaeger?", something roars to life in Raleigh's chest like a supernova.

 

'In a Jaeger,' a whisper that sounds like Yancy begins, iambic and rhythmic, reverberating against his chest and surging like a tidal wave until Raleigh's heart thuds like it means to leave him. 'In a Jaeger. In a **_Jaeger_**!' It is a vibrant, almost tangible feeling that slides along his consciousness and the jagged remains of the ghost drift soften with something warm that chases away the cold that had settled in his bones for so long. His veins alight, his resolve settles, and he follows Pentecost with a heavy purpose in his step reminiscent of his brother.

 

Raleigh Becket steps into a helicopter to leave the cold of Alaska and out of one into a heavy rain on the flight deck of the Hong Kong Shatterdome. Sunlight blooms from his chest for the first time in too long, burning His Icarus wings until he is two hundred and fifty feet tall and made of metal and nuclear energy and is no longer falling unbidden to his death, and he finds that walking into a sea of monsters is suddenly bearable.


End file.
